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Obama is on the brink of Democratic nomination without confronting head-on questions about his general-election hurdles.
AP Photo

But there is reason to question whether he would be able to perform at average levels with other main pillars of the traditional Democratic coalition: blue-collar whites, Jews and Hispanics. He has run decently among these groups in some places, but in general he’s run well behind her.

Obama lost the Jewish vote by double-digits in Florida, New York and Maryland — and that was before controversy over anti-Israel remarks of Wright.

An undecided Democratic superdelegate told us many Jewish voters are itching for a reason to break with the party and side with Republicans, who have embraced the Israeli cause with passion. A small shift could swing swing states like Florida and Pennsylvania, which have significant Jewish populations.

Obama won only about one-third of Hispanic votes on Super Tuesday — and did even worse a month later in Texas. A Democratic nominee needs big margins with Hispanics to win states like New Mexico, California, Colorado and Arizona. In the fall, Obama would be running against a Republican with a record on immigration that will resonate with Hispanics.

Then there’s the lower-income white vote. Does it seem odd that a woman with a polarizing reputation would be rolling up enormous margins among some of the country’s most traditional voters? Three out of every four blue-collar whites in small towns and rural areas of Ohio voted for Clinton over Obama on March 4. The reality is, this is already an electorate with deep cultural divisions — and that’s in the Democratic Party.

Cornell Belcher, Obama’s pollster, says most of these voting blocs will unite when the Democratic fighting is done. “You get a snapshot at the height of a battle within the family but after the family squabbles history shows that the family does come back together,” he said.

Fair enough. But McCain would be challenging Obama on a range of issues that would complicate this coming together — issues that Clinton did not use or used minimally because they were not particularly effective in a Democratic campaign.

McCain, by contrast, would have a free hand to exploit a paper trail showing Obama’s evolution — opponents would say reversals — over the past decade from liberal positions on gun control, the death penalty and Middle East politics. He would exploit Obama’s current position in favor of driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants and beginning diplomatic talks with U.S. adversaries like the dictators of Iran and Venezuela. Will those issues help lower-income white voters “come back together” with Obama?

Those issues are all in-bounds. What about the issues that most journalists and probably McCain himself will consider out-of-bounds but that, if recent history is any guide, will echo nonetheless in the general election?

The last two Democratic nominees, Al Gore and John F. Kerry, were both military veterans, and both had been familiar, highly successful figures in national politics for more than two decades by the time they ran.

OMG, He did not say people turn to Guns and God! What he said was that people don't vote on economic issues any more. People vote on candidates Gun laws, or religion, or abortion rights, not on things like economic policies, because people are bitter and don't think that the government or politicians are going to help them anyway. Because for twenty years politicians have stood there and lied to the people on how they would help them. Why is this so twisted?

For all those HRC supporters who've been declaring that Politico is relentlessly pro-Obama, please look around. Most of these opinion pieces - though the arguments are thin as rice paper - put Hillary in a very positive light.

What Clinton wishes she could say, to go back to this thread, would be that only SHE can win the DEM nomination. Now the fact that her stratospheric negatives would resurrect the dead and dying to vote against her doesn't surface in this article.

What many others would wish Clinton (and her happy hubby) would say is the truth. Just that. The truth. Fewer whoppers, a lot less spin, and a great deal more substance.

Obama is indeed poised and self-confident. But the current uproar over his impromptu sociology lesson in San Francisco about “bitter” voters in Pennsylvania raise questions about his self-discipline, and his understanding of how easy it is for a politician in modern politics to lose control of his public image.

Obama is not ready for "prime time" The more we see him and look into what makes him tick, the more we see he is not qualified to be the president of this great country.

HIlary Clintons sleep with the most dangerous lobbyist in recent history, Bill CLinton. He makes $109 millions lobbying foreign countries, get the tax payers pay his rent and expenses $10 millions in 7 years, twice as much as other presidents and want to tell us that they understand the little JOE. I am bitter and i hate politics as usual.

"A former president of the United States received a donation from a Chinese firm that is involved in censorship, and now his wife is running for president. This is a shame of the U.S.," said Harry Wu, an exiled Chinese activist based in Washington.

The Clinton foundation and the former president's library in Little Rock have received millions of dollars in donations from the Saudi royal family and the Middle East sheikdoms of the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Qatar, along with the governments of Taiwan and Brunei.

Now do an article about what Obama would love to say about Hillary but cant! The republicans will paint Hillary as 1) a Liar! She lied about all of her experience, and the bosnia story, with video would be a never ending loop of a comercial! that she campaigns against nafta, but has acampaign manager and a Husband lobbying for these feals as we speak! 2) Bill Clinton is a disaster, and he was so weak on Defense that he failed to adress Osama Bin Laden wen he had the chance to take him out back then. 3) The entire Monica lewinsky debockle! Obama never brought it up at all, but do you really think the Republicans will fail to bring up that Bill Clinton got ******** from a 19 year old Intern, IN THE OVAL OFFICE! That he was Impeached and that he souldnt even be let back in the building! That she will lose the entire black and young vote because they all want Obama. That half the country already hates her, and that it is much easier to get republicans unified to vote against her then it is Obama! Is that enough...I'm sure the's more. That was just off the top of my head!

What he said was that people don't vote on economic issues any more. People vote on candidates Gun laws, or religion, or abortion rights, not on things like economic policies, because people are bitter and don't think that the government or politicians are going to help them anyway. Because for twenty years politicians have stood there and lied to the people on how they would help them. Why is this so twisted?

Thank you. Yes, there are a few people who've bothered to figure out what he said.

Rather than oversimplifying complex issues, Obama makes the mistake of remaining nuanced and multifaceted. He doesn't reduce our messy complexities to a few sound bites of happy horses***. Perhaps that is a failing for a politician in our impatient society.

It?s easy for Clinton to say, ''goodbye Florida, Hispanics and New Mexico'', but if Hillary were nominated, the Democrats could say ''goodbye Blacks, goodbye College Graduates, and Goodbye voters with Integrity''. And if Hillary were to be elected, America could say, ''goodbye Allies and goodbye peace''. This election is not as bad as if our choices were between Hitler and Attila the Hun. However, neither Clinton nor Obama are ideal candidates. Hence, those who somehow become hysterically attached to one candidate will start hyperventilating and go into convulsions when the slightest flaw is discovered in the other candidate.

FACT IS: The republicans knew she would run for POTUS. They have a prepared attack strategy that will insure McCain's victory. Sean Hannity and Fox News Wright sound bites is nothing compared to what they have in their vault for HRC.

Everyone is always saying they know nothing about Obama...right, he caught the repubs off guard, which is their fear. Repubs want a Hillary nomination for a reason -- it's called strategy.

A message to McHillClinton The american people want some straight talk and are tired of the politics as usual. Barack Obama just won another super delegate. The Clinton will fail miserably and will take their misery in the senate after the election cycle. Hilary Clinton is married to the most dangerous lobbyist in recent history. Bill Clinton

He lobbyied foreign government that are against the interest of the USA. Columbia, Kazakstan.Bill Clinton and his wife made $800 000 lobbying for the Columbia Free Trade Agreement and they want us to believe that we are idiots.

We are not idiots, but bitter and ready to vote you out of this race.

Hilary Clinton made $109 millions in only 7years, had their rent paid for ($ 10 million in just 7 years)by the poor working class family and want us to believe that she does understand?

McHiillClinton is a fraud, a crook and a liar who will pass the light detector test because she lies so much that the detector will go numb.

The idea of this article seems to be that wrapping yourself in insincere "pseudo-patriotic" verbiage about "god, guns and glory" is the way to become President (plus being a white man really helps). Granted that has been effective. The problem right now is that the Clinton/Bush years have made increasingly bitter clinging Americans a bit more skeptical about that tactic. What have Hillary and McCain done lately for small town America? Have they protected hunting land from getting turned into sub-divisions? No. Have they created jobs in rural places? No. Obama scores big in the ghetto and the small town because he speaks their language. These are people who just aren't falling for the beltway wisdom of this article. Not this time, not after our foreign policy has been hijacked by oil industry common criminals for eight years who robbed the federal treasury and raked in billions. That ****es off people in the small town and the big city, Hoosiers and Harvard. Millions of bitter Americans clinging to their guns sounds like the Sons of Liberty to me. Maybe the criminal tyrants in Washington should take notice. When Obama wishes to say something, he just says it, and that's why he's winning and they aren't. That's why this article is just plain wrong. An honest man from Harvard is definately to be preferred to a thief like Bush with the pick-up truck and the cowboy hat. Flim-flam. Not this time. -JL

1. Core Democrats will vote Democrat. 2. African Americans will vote 99% for Obama. 3. Obama has so little baggage compared to Clinton that the Republican right wing will simply have to make stuff up, a tactic that can be turned against McCain. Clinton thinks she's vetted? The Republicans will not be nice, like Obama. They will bring up the myriad of Clinton scandals and put them in our faces for four months. 4. McCain is old and boring. He will put people to sleep in the Presidentail debates. When on stage, in stark contrast to Obama, McCain will appear feeble and confused. He's already appearing feeble and confused in friendly company. Think how that will look when he's in a confrontational arena. 5. Youth, first time voters, will vote for Obama because they will not be able to identify with McCain. 6. Well educated people will vote for Obama. 7. Moderate Republicans who oppose the war and NAFTA will vote for Obama. Obama appears to be a strong candidate.

Demos (once again) makes the GOP's point. I wish Obama Democrats would learn to support their candidate without resorting to GOP-like slimming the character of the Clintons. This is exactly the sort of thing the Bradley supporters did to Al Gore back in '00. Didn't we learn anything from those primaries and that general election, or is it more preferable to elect McCain instead of Hillary (as it was for some Brdley Dems to elect Bush over Gore)?

Cut and Paste from KOS: Bitter and Angry in Rural Pennsylvania: Obama's Reality vs. Hillary's Fantasy by astral66 [Subscribe] Sat Apr 12, 2008 at 03:47:47 PM PDT Maybe there aren't many Bubbas driving around in pickup trucks with the classic bumper sticker "God, Guns and Guts Made America Free" where Obama's detractors live, but here in rural Pennsylvania that line may as well replace "e pluribus unum" as the motto on the national currency. astral66's diary :: :: I live in western Pennsylvania, and I can tell you, people here are bitter and angry. Poverty is prevalent. People hunt squirrels and eat them, along with racoon stew. People also hunt deer here, not for sport, but so they can put meat in their freezer so they can feed their families. They cut wood in the forests and heat their homes with wood stoves because they can't afford to pay the gas bill. I know a guy who goes to old landfills to dig up old milk and beer bottles to sell on eBay. He uses the proceeds to buy clothes for his family at the Salvation Army (and to pay for his dial-up connection). Racism and prejudice are ever-present here. A friend of mine is part-owner of bar in a small rural town south of where I live. I meet up with him there occasionally and watch as down-and-out people come in with their disability and welfare check money and drink it away. It's a pretty depressing place, but it does serve as the social center for a town that has seen its few industries shut down and the local people's jobs eliminated or shipped off elsewhere. I hear the usual rants there, that it's all the fault of gays and minorities and immigrants (although those aren't the terms used, but rather the usual, virulent slurs). A black man walked in the last time I was there, and a guy near me at the bar muttered in a not-so-quiet way, "What's he think he's doing in here?" When I brought up the presidential race and Obama with another man at the bar, his response was, "there ain't no way America is ever going to vote for a black guy." Later on my bar-owner friend told me about his experience talking about Obama with another woman at the bar, and her angry response was that "it's because of half-breed n*****s like him that America is in such bad shape today." Prejudice, racism and fear do run rampant in areas like this. People are poor. They are in bad health, overweight from a deep-fried diet, and toothless from the lack of dental care. They are unemployed. They are uneducated. They do cling to their hunting rifles and to their religious beliefs. For many, it is about all that they have. The towns around here are full of decaying, boarded up buildings. People live in rundown old trailers with abandoned cars in the front yard. I have seen people using an old car as a stable, with their goat tied to and living in it. I could drive you by a least three old houses that have Conderate flags in the windows. So go ahead and discount Obama's talk of how bitter and angry that some of the people of rural Pennsylvania are. Call him elitist for taking the time to pass through areas such as this to listen to what the people have to say, and to then relate what he has heard to people in more prosperous parts of the country when he is asked about it. I have lived in San Francisco, and let me tell you, there is a marked difference between the general attitude there and the attitude here in the "rust belt". Go ahead and dismiss everything that Obama said as political posturing. Let Hillary and McCain "pick him apart" and parse his words. But please keep in mind that when Obama said: "it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." that he is 100% accurate in his assessment. I know, because I live here, my family and my friends' families have lived here for generations, and we see it every day, all around this region. There is a very fine line between poverty and prosperity here, where making above $20,000 a year puts you in the realm of the "haves", but also knowing that you're one contract termination away from joining the ranks of the "have-nots". I come from a family of dairy farmers. I know what it's like to spend up to 12-16 hours a day sitting on a tractor for three dollars an hour, which I did through high school and every summer until I was fortunate enough to head off to college. Many of my friends were also fortunate and went to school, and then relocated to other parts of the country. Some of us were able to come back under better circumstances, but the large majority of people here are not as fortunate. Thirty years worth of the right wing dismantling our public education system has taken its toll. Thirty years worth of mismanagement of the economy, of shutting down factories and shipping jobs out of the country, of subsidizing corporate farms and taxing family farms out of business, has taken its toll. Yes, people are angry, and bitter, but Obama never said that they aren't resilient, opitmistic or hard-working. Those are Hillary and McCain's twisted words, and for them to stand up and suggest that rural Pennsylvanians aren't fed up with the way things are, only reveals how out of touch they really are with at least this part of the country. Of course, all McCain has to do is suggest to poor rural folk that the party of gun-control, gay marriage, and NAFTA is going to take away what little they have left, and rural conservatives will vote for him, just as they did for Reagan, Bush I and Bush II. As for Hillary, the more she "takes apart" Obama's message, the more she does the GOP's work for free. If Hillary can't see that the people of rural Pennsylvania are bitter, and angry, and mad as hell about the way things are, then she needs to step down from that one hundred million dollar platform of hers and take a real look around. In western Pennsylvania I hear two things: the "God, Guns and Guts" crowd see John McCain as the heir-apparent to the mantle of rural conservative values; and the people who hope for some kind of change see Barack Obama as the person who understands the situation that we are in, and maybe is the one who can lead us in a new direction. What I don't hear is anyone talking about whatever and whomever it is that Hillary claims to stand for. In the end, I think this is all a "lost in translation" much ado about nothing episode. Going back to Obama's statement, and keeping in mind that he was speaking to a specific group of supporters in San Francsico, and keeping in mind that he was discussing a variety of "talking points" in the previous paragraph, I think that it is the absence of the word "issue" in this particular portion of his response to one of the attendee's questions that is lost in translation from the actual event to the transcript spun in the media. So let's break it down: "'Well, what is this guy going to do for me? What's the concrete thing?' What they wanna hear is -- so, we'll give you talking points about what we're proposing -- close tax loopholes, roll back, you know, the tax cuts for the top 1 percent. Obama's gonna give tax breaks to middle-class folks and we're gonna provide health care for every American. So we'll go down a series of talking points. Obama is offering: - closing tax loopholes - roll back taxes for the top 1 percent - tax breaks to the middle class - health care for every American But: "But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there's not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them." "So it's not surprising then that they get bitter" and "As a way to explain their frustrations...they cling to" issues that focus on: - guns - religion - antipathy to people who aren't like them - anti-immigrant sentiment - anti-trade sentiment It's the usual laundry list of GOP hot-button talking points. What Obama was doing was contrasting his talking points, with the tradtional GOP talking points that he has to contend with if he is going to break through and reach these tradtional blue-collar voters. I can't imagine that anyone who was in the room with Obama misunderstood this. It's only when the transcript is removed from the context in which the information was delivered that the MSM begins to spin it into something that it's not.

The former president's charity has raised more than $500 million over the last decade ...

But his reliance on influential foreign donors and his foundation's refusal to release its list of donors have led to repeated questions about the sources and transparency of his fundraising -- even as Hillary Clinton has talked on the campaign trail about relying on him as a roving international ambassador if she is elected president.

...Bill Clinton's reliance on international businesses and foreign governments to finance his worldwide charity campaigns raise issues of potential conflicts of interest if he were to take an active role in his wife's administration.

(LA Times, 4/13/2008)

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***NOTICE TO REMAINING PRIMARY STATES:: Please don't let them sale our county out like they did on NAFTA, CAFTA, and other sorted deals. Please don't take comfort in the CLINTON ILLUSION.

Apparently Hillary was slamming down a Crown Royal shot and beer chaser on the campaign trail this weekend. Now, that's gotta be a story. I can't pull that off anymore, so what's up with this? Is it frustration with her message, and what happened afterward?

Why would any Democrat in their right mind think Hillary Clinton, the most toxic person in America, would be more electable than Barack Obama? Thats what doesn't make sense about this Clinton/Clinton-sycophant argument: If they don't nominate Barack Obama, they gotta nominate Hillary Clinton.